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Smoking in Top-Grossing Movies — United States, 2010

Wednesday, August 10, 2011Posted by: Natalia Gromov

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. MMWR, Weekly 60(27):910-943.

Smoking in movies has been shown to contribute significantly to young people starting to smoke. A 2010 meta-analysis of four studies concluded that 44% of youth smoking initiation can be attributed to viewing tobacco incidents in movies. This study compared major motion picture companies that have adopted a tobacco reduction policy to those without such a policy. Results of the study showed that the total number of onscreen tobacco incidents in youth-rated movies has gone down 71.6% from 2005 to 2010 (595 incidents in 2010 compared to 2093 in 2005). However, only three of the six major studios have a published, written smoking reduction policy in place. Those three studios had reductions in tobacco use depictions in youth-rated movies between 2005 and 2010 ranging from 91.5% to 98.9%. As a comparison, the three major studios and Independent studios with no published, written smoking reduction policy had reductions ranging from 26.4% to 62.7% during the same time period.